SFAQ Pick: “Strike The Sun” solo exhibition by Robert Longo at Petzel, New York.

Currently on view at Petzel, New York is “Strike The Sun,” a solo exhibition by Robert Longo in partnership with Metro Pictures. At Petzel, Longo looks to the U.S. Capitol building and the American flag, two highly polarizing national symbols. In Longo’s enormous seven-panel drawing of this historic building, the immutable monumentality of the U.S. Capitol image is particularized by subtle variations in the molding above each of the building’s windows and by their individual curtains. Longo’s most recent confrontation with the contentious nature of the American flag as symbol of both nationalism and protest is a 17-foot high black wax surfaced sculpture that appears to collapse into or fall through the gallery’s floor. A mediating note is a drawing of the poignantly solemn image of the riderless horse that led JFK’s funeral procession. A concurrent exhibition at Metro Pictures, “Gang of Cosmos,” includes twelve charcoal drawings of well-known Abstract Expressionist paintings.